EDE (Electronic Data Exchange) is a standard format for transferring trial information that was defined in the 1980's. It worked well in the 1980's and 90's when this technology was new, however now it is obsolete technology. Historically, Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) defined a format for transferring data between researchers. ARM continues to support EDE for these historical programs.

• Inability to carry imbedded binary data.
• EDE can only effectively store ASCII characters, so is very Unicode-unfriendly and makes no accommodation for double-byte characters. One result is that EDE poorly handles many of the accented characters in European and Eastern European names, and does not support Asian character sets. (Clients do not appreciate software that can only handle English characters, and thus forces their names to be spelled wrong!)
• Frequent errors when exporting and importing EDE on computers running Asian Windows versions.
• Any new data entry or ARM settings fields can only be added to EDE after detailed discussions with clients who use that EDE format. Historically this has made it challenging to enhance screens with new entry fields or even make minor changes to existing fields.
• EDE files sent by email are corrupted by some email systems, such as when the mail system mistakenly thinks the EDE is plain text and adds CR/LF to break long lines into 80 character segments.
• There are literally more than a dozen different EDE formats, in which the same piece of information may be stored in several different record types and locations depending on the selected format.